Monday 19 October 2009

Protection (GREEN)

In general, the abilities introduced in the first campaign are the ones I first put in the game, while the other ones I added later when I came back to it with new ideas after a break. Protection is the exception. Repair Swarm had its place originally, but players were being confused by it because it works in a slightly weird way - they were doing things like activating it when they were nearly dead, expecting it to repair them immediately. I realised that if they'd had Protection instead, it would have done exactly what they wanted then - Protection was the ability they were intuitively wanting to use - so I swapped them. It seems better to have the easier-to-use stuff introduced first, and the more confusing stuff later. An improvement! Hooray!

Monday 5 October 2009

Star Attack (GREEN) and Blog Explanation Procedure

There's not much to say about this ability - it's been in there from early on, has changed very little, and is very easy to understand how to use - so instead I'm going to provide an explanation for these posts.  People have told me for a while that I should start a blog, so finally I got around to it, but had no idea how to start writing in it.  I'd put the name Mighty Vision as the blog title (being an ability in the game I'm working on), was staring at it trying to think how to start writing, then I thought "alright, it says Mighty Vision there, so I'll just write about that".  So now I'm writing a series of posts about the Vertex Dispenser abilities, mostly as an exercise to get me into the swing of writing things at all.  I'm trying to say something interesting about each one, whether it's how it changed during the design process or how it can be used in the game.  There are currently 28 abilities in total, so that determines enough posts that by the time I'm through I'll doubtless have levelled up.  And maybe I'll have gotten around to releasing the game, so the things I'm talking about will make sense to people other than myself and the few who've tested it.